Denis Dyack on Story and Content in Games, Part 2

How Silicon Knights works and why they control the IP for Too Human.

Last week we posted the first part of our discussion with Denis Dyack about storytelling in videogames, a subject he tackled head-on in a GDC panel a few weeks ago. We left off talking about videogame genres and how Dyack believes they will die out, as we know them.

1UP: On the subject of genres, you mentioned science fiction and horror as staple videogame genres. Just before this interview -- literally like 20 minutes before I got here -- I was at a talk with Sarah Monette, a science fiction and fantasy writer. She expressed some frustration that speculative fiction is still separated into its own genre at all. She suggested the same thing you're suggesting for videogames -- that you can spread this out into already-existing genres of literature, like comedy, tragedy, drama, etc. She brought up Shakespeare, whose plays had fantasy elements but were always considered tragedies or comedies. So what you're expressing for our whole medium is something that writers are struggling with in genre fiction.

Denis Dyack: If you look at it through Aristotle's Poetics, it really comes down to only two genres, comedy and tragedy. I really like that, but the problem with tragedy is that it doesn't translate as well to today's world with what it meant back then versus what it does now. But I agree with Monette's point. There are a lot of people who think science fiction is not very good. It's considered almost like a sub-culture within literature.

1UP: That's exactly what she was talking about. Science fiction has its own group of people, and if you're outside of that group of people who read science fiction, you probably look down on it, but if you're in that group, you probably look down on the people who are looking down on science fiction. As she was saying that, I was thinking that videogame fans aren't that different.

Dyack: In my opinion, that's the effects of people who are open to technology, both for the good and the bad. Science fiction is a derivative of the Western in film. First there was the Wild West and all that exploration, but the next step was outer space. That's the new frontier, the unknown and all the speculation. We give a homage to that in Too Human in the opening scene. I'm not trying to sell you Too Human here, but the opening scene is like a Western bar scene. There's almost no dialogue, and the hero comes in; that illustrates our thoughts on the medium. I wrote that scene just after we finished Eternal Darkness. I was in Hawaii on vacation, actually, and I'd just bought my first laptop. But it's stuff like that, it's forward-thinking, merging these kinds of things.

One of the things that Silicon Knights is working toward now as a company, we're trying to integrate ourselves into academia as much as we can. We have a lecture series that goes on in the company. As you can see in our video diary [EDITOR'S NOTE: Check it out in Part 1.], Dr. Barry Grant and Dr. John Mitterer have been consulting at Silicon Knights for over ten years. Some of our people teach courses over at the university. We started a university course called "Interactive Arts and Sciences" where you can essentially get a degree in interactive media. Those are things I think our industry needs. Right now there's not a lot of that going on. I'll be flying down to do some work with MIT even. We're just really trying to get everything as integrated as possible. That's the future for our industry.

1UP: Clearly from the direction of this interview, I'm a fan of the idea of taking a more academic approach to games and thinking about them in more artistic terms. Here's a direct quote from you about just that subject from the GDC panel: "This whole school of thought where people think games cannot aspire to serious art is completely brain-dead." People reacting to that quote and to the panel in general -- well, there were some people who were supporting your ideas, but there were also some who were very much taking this point of view, saying games don't need to be art. One person commenting on 1UP said he "prefers [his] junk food."

Dyack: Junk food is still art. It's just a different kind. I'm not going to disagree with that. People like popcorn; I like popcorn. Sometimes I'll eat popcorn. But as a person, as a human being, I cannot live on popcorn alone. I'll get fat -- or fatter -- and become very unhealthy and won't have a well-balanced lifestyle. When it comes to our fiction and the types of content we create, there's no reason we can't aspire to Shakespeare. I really think we need that, and if we start thinking that videogames can't do that, then we're in big trouble. It's not that I think popcorn is bad, but I think just popcorn is very bad.

1UP: You joined an amazing group of individuals at the GDC panel with a wide variance of opinions, and the back-and-forth was fantastic. But especially you and Matthew Karch from Saber Interactive, you guys really stole the show.

Dyack: Yeah, Matthew's a good guy.

1UP: Eventually, though, this discussion between you and Matthew turned into a sort of political debate, especially when you started talking about outsourcing. Do you find that there are political ideals underlying this whole debate about the future of videogames?

Dyack: I think it's going on everywhere in the industry. He started talking about economics, and that's when I brought up Peter Drucker.

1UP: Yeah, I wanted to discuss that as well.

Dyack: If you look at Matthew, he is almost 100% outsourcing. His company is in Russia. He's got 90 people in Russia and 5 people in the U.S.

1UP: Yes, and during the panel he was very adamant -- it was outsourcing but it wasn't contract work is, I think, the distinction he was trying to make. "We have 90 guys in Russia, but they're our guys," he said.

Dyack: Okay, well, Peter Drucker did a book called The Post-Capitalist Society. He talks about knowledge-based industries and how the economy is going to change over time. He says that current manufacturing is going to all go overseas. That was a long time ago that he said that. I think he wrote the book back in 1989 or 1992, so it's pretty dated. [EDITOR'S NOTE: According to Wikipedia, The Post-Capitalist Society was published in 1993.] The next level, according to Drucker, is going to be the service industry, banking and stuff like that. That's where outsourcing starts.

When you start outsourcing, in my eyes you're commoditizing your people. You're saying you can get other people anywhere to do this, because it's just a service. The knowledge engineers, which Drucker places as the biggest revenue generators for economics -- he's got all kinds of reasons why and has written many books on it -- they're the people who create ideas. Those are the people you really have to value. The people who create the games at Silicon Knights are all knowledge engineers. If you start outsourcing that, you're saying this is a service. You're de-valuing everyone's contributions. There are a lot of economic reasons why a lot of people believe Peter Drucker is right.

I'm not sure if Matthew knew what I was talking about when I brought that up or has had a chance to respond. Another person I'm interested in right now is Richard Florida, an economist who is basically the new Peter Drucker. He talks about knowledge-based industries and small businesses really coming to the forefront of the economy. Another person who I mentioned at the panel who's been a really big influence in my life is Ursula Franklin, who I consider a humanist. She's a physicist who survived the concentration camps during World War II. She looks at the effects technology has on society, and a lot of the things I'm saying about technology and commoditization are reflections on her studies.

When you take all these ideas together, I see outsourcing as de-valuing people. It's commoditizing us. Look at the Hollywood model. I said we have to fight the Hollywood model, we have to fight contract work, we have to fight unions. Maybe unions less so, but contract work, if you hire a writer contract, you're essentially saying anyone can write your story. What we're saying is, no, they have to be an integrated part of the entire studio to do it well.

1UP: One of the other people on the panel, Matt Costello from id -- the one who wrote 7th Guest, I believe -- he's a writer himself, but he disagreed with you on this point. He suggested that a writer on staff actually cuts off the option of finding a writer who does fit the story. Since each game story has a different style, he said some writers will work better with different styles.

Dyack: And that's the Hollywood model: everyone has their specialty, everyone's freelance, and it's survival of the fittest. In my eyes, though, Hollywood becomes very dysfunctional.

1UP: Well, you've got the people from Hollywood saying that themselves and trying to get into the games industry. Look at the Pirates of the Caribbean director, Gore Verbinski, and what he said at the DICE conference.

Dyack: Exactly. A lot of these people in our industry look at Hollywood and think they're doing good. Me, I look at Hollywood, and I look at the movie industry and the music industry, and I think there's a lot of good things we can borrow, but there's also a lot of land mines we should avoid. The whole idea of putting people into contracts was for the studios to control intellectual property for the movies. It broke people down to the point where it was all about money and control, and it was all about, quite frankly, commoditization of people. They succeeded very well, but after a while, the problem is that now the movie industry is starting to become dysfunctional. A lot of really good directors only work with the same people over and over again. All the people I talk to in the movie industry, I ask them what works and what doesn't. And they say, "Always work with the same people." There's all these myths that you can hire anyone to do all your stuff, but it's really not like that.

Our model is actually going much further back. We're taking the model of a traditional guild, where I want to be as close as I can to a university. There's a learning environment, but at the same time we have trade secrets. The only thing I can think of most recently that comes close to that is the concept of a guild from back in Medieval times. They would teach you the way that they did things, and at the same time there would be secrets. Guilds were meant so you could stay there for life and didn't need to switch. The guild was self-supportive. That's why we've structured Silicon Knights the way we have, because we're really big believers in that.

We also follow the model of a Shakespearean troupe. Everyone contributes to the game. We've had lots of people come in and lecture on Shakespeare and the history behind Shakespeare, and it's not even clear if he was an actual person, or if it was the troupe just iterating over time. But if you look at Shakespeare's plays in general, the content they produced was insanely complex and really well-done. We looked at that and asked ourselves if there's any way we can try to harvest that sort of thing. So we structured the company around those two ideals. Whether we're successful or not, time will tell, but we've been around much longer than most developers. With Silicon Knights, if you're here for ten years, we knight you and give you a sword.

1UP: Yeah, you had mentioned that either on the panel or on 1UP Yours.

Dyack: Yeah, so this year we're giving out 13 or 14 swords. It's crazy, it's really great. How many developers have had people that have been with them over a decade? Except for the Japanese developers. When we worked with Miyamoto-san, we felt like children. He was like, "Yeah, I've worked with this guy for over 25 years." That's how their games are so good.

1UP: Stepping back to what you said about the old Hollywood model of maintaining control over IP: clearly this is a risk in the videogames industry of certain publishers and developers trying to mimic Hollywood too much in that regard. Looking at big developers like Electronic Arts and Activision, do you think that specific problem of controlling IP is going to be a big issue in coming years? It seems to come up in every other medium.

Dyack: The younger the medium, the more IP is an issue. If you look at one of the oldest mediums, straight literature, books, who controls the IP is not really an issue. The author always controls it generally. If you look at music and television and movies, the more modern you get, the more it starts to turn the other way. Corporations, or non-people, start controlling things.

1UP: I know it's a big deal in comic books too.

Dyack: Yeah, exactly. It's all the same. I think it's just a matter of exploitation. I don't mean exploitation of people so much, but corporations want to be able to control the rights and exploit those the most they can. In the end, though, as soon as you take something away from an author, you're immediately diluting it, and you're hurting the industry. As an example, I'll talk about Legacy of Kain. We created the first Legacy of Kain. We came up with all the content, all the story, but in the end we moved away from that series. Crystal Dynamics tried to take it over. A lot of people liked what they did. But if you look at Legacy of Kain where it is right now -- so diluted, so dysfunctional -- as a property itself, it's pretty much gone in a completely different direction than we would have ever taken it.

When we were doing Legacy of Kain, we had a lot of research into vampire mythology and a lot of ideas on where we were going. Crystal Dynamics merged in this entirely different game that had nothing to do with the series and then slapped the IP on it, and that's where Soul Reaver came from. That was just a weapon in the game. Even if the developer's good, and I think Crystal Dynamics is not a bad developer, you get this dilution of the content, because the original author is gone.

1UP: Do you consider that your lesson learned as far as IP and handing over IP rights?

Dyack: It's more a lesson for the industry, if anything. If you take away the people who created a game, you really have to question its value. There are some people who think, "Oh no, we can exploit this." That's what Hollywood is all about. In Hollywood, they don't care who the author is. Look at Ridley Scott's Alien. Then they got James Cameron to do Aliens. It continued on that path, and look at the Aliens franchise now. Right now, it's Aliens vs. Predator, but they are not even close to the same league as what they used to be. If you ask me, it's primarily because the authors, the original creators of that content are gone.

1UP: Are you maintaining control over new IPs that you come up with now?

Dyack: Yes, yes.

1UP: The Eternal Darkness IP? The Too Human IP? Are those all fully yours now? You're not handing over control to publishers?

Dyack: I'll talk from a Too Human perspective, because that's the one I can comment on right now. We control the IP for Too Human. Eventually people die, and there's the argument that a corporation can outlive a human being, and all that. At that point, should it really become public domain? What really is going to help forward the medium? I'm a big proponent of doing what we can to make the medium stronger and avoiding pitfalls to make our industry the best it can be.

1UP: At the GDC panel you said that Silicon Knights is a company "with moral imperatives." Can you share what any of these moral imperatives are?

Dyack: That was more of a crack at Matthew Karch when he said something about not having the morals to worry about taking care of people for the company. Without question, the most important thing about Silicon Knights is the people. Without the people, Silicon Knights does not exist. A corporation is an empty shell without people. Corporations don't do things; people within corporations do. The shark business model mentality -- I heard someone say it's a New York mentality, which is where I think Matt's from -- I wholly do not agree with that. What's most important to me at all times is keeping the people at Silicon Knights together and as happy as possible. By doing that, we'll create the best games. That is, I think, the moral imperative that we have. Wherever that leads us to, that's where we'll go, rather than the bottom line, corporate dollar, answering to shareholders stuff. I find that stuff very short-sighted and not a good model to run on.

1UP: I know you've said you don't want to sell us your game, and I'm not going to ask you to, but I do want to ask you one Too Human-related question that I think is relevant for this post-GDC chat. In addition to the 1UP Yours appearance we've discussed, you also guested on the post-GDC week episode of EGM Live and discussed Too Human a bit on there. You did have that little kerfluffle with EGM about our negative preview of Too Human during E3 2006. At GDC this year the game was finally playable again, and the reaction was, I would say, extremely positive. How do you feel about the change? Are you feeling justified now that people seem to be once again excited about Too Human?

Dyack: I'm definitely happy about that, and I'd be crazy not to be. Back in 2006 -- well, a lot of things have come to light since then -- but in the preview where we were called terrible... I felt they were wrong, I have to believe they were wrong. I'm the game's director, and if I don't believe in the game, I should just quit right away. If I didn't believe we're making the best game possible, I'd really have to question if I'm doing the right job. But from a perspective of previews and how they're done in our industry, I think it's still broken terribly. One of the things I think the movie industry does right is that they don't start marketing a movie until it's finished. Then the marketing team will look at it and figure out what they have. I would love to do that. We're really getting close to done on Too Human, so I was much more comfortable showing it.

I was also super-happy that [1UP freelancer and former EGM writer] Mark MacDonald got a chance to sit down and play it. [EDITOR'S NOTE: Mark MacDonald wrote the negative preview in EGM that was mentioned above.] It was second-hand, but talking to [1UP Executive Editor] Shane Bettenhausen and [former 1UP Previews Editor] Bryan Intihar, Mark said the new demo was excellent. I was like, "Yeah!" Honestly, that made my GDC. That quote alone. I was so happy. In the end, if he had still hated it, it's really completely fair, and it's his opinion. But that was really tremendous for us.

I think we still have an uphill battle, though. A lot of games, when they get previewed, they have hype working for them. People worry about if a game will live up to the hype. Too Human will never have that problem. Too Human will always be fighting for every single inch of positive that we get. We had a pretty steep crater to ascend. I think we've recovered a lot from that, but how much remains to be seen. The truth will come in time when we see how well the game does, how it's received as far as marketing and PR and publishing. We'll see whether people will be willing to give it the benefit of the doubt.

1UP: I hope it works out for the best, Denis. Thanks for talking with us!

Comments (21)

Can't secure the rights to insight

Dennis always comes off like someone that's read a single book on a subject and figured that was enough.
He never seems demonstrate any understanding of nuance in complicated subjects.
His thoughts on philosphy, economics, genre theory, and aesthetics only serve to illustrate his shortcomings.
That being said, it is certainly not possible to head up the development of a game the size of Too Human and accumalate what amounts to four life times of academic study.
P.S. Tragicomedy for a start.

Isn't Your Game Late?

And Denis rhymes with?
Anyway, you certainly have plenty of time to flap your yap as your game continues to push later and later.
Is there something so small inside you that you just feel the need to yack at the rest of us gamers for no reason? I've seen your name more than Miyamoto's lately.
And he knows games.
He fired you.
Get back to work on Shrew Bloomin' or whatever it's called.
Please.
And shut up.

Dyack the Communist

I can't believe the drivel that comes out of this guy's mouth. He speaks about "commoditizing human beings" as if affording people outside of the country (in his case Canada) the opportunity to work in the game business is somehow "exploitation". He fails to speak about how his company is supported by grants from the socialist Canadian government which make it possible for him to keep everything "in house".
Its easy to take the "moral high road" when your company is essentially on welfare. Who knows maybe the next Eternal Darkness will actually sell half as well as it reviews? Then again with the publisher that they have signed up with, I have my doubts...
The bottom line is that this industry is plagued by fools who want to come off as visionaries, but the only people that they are going to convince are the few dolts who buy into their nonsense. This guy is a bad joke at a cheap nightclub.

It sounds like to me that...

he's trying to be the Arthur C. Clarke of video game storytelling. By using the same concepts of forward thinking to not only make it a workable game reality but possibly a window of the future to come. "Interactive Arts and Sciences", I like the sound of that...

I want nothing more

than to hate Denis Dyack. Unfortunately, every time he talks he spews all this interesting hullabaloo and wins me over - dragging me back onto the Too Human hype train. I almost caught myself agreeing with his 1 console future nonsense even.. Scary :( Great interview.

jeeez

RE: Nick

I think he's more referring to outsourcing as a means to mainly cut cost. He feels companies should value individual contributions instead of just looking at savings on an account sheet. And as someone that was laid off last year, I agree.

It Warms My Jaded Heart

To see an honest-to-god intellectual interview in a gaming article. I agree with a lot the man says, I disagree on some of the financial things he says, but it seems the more I hear Mr. Dyack, the more respect I have for him. I'm looking forward to Too Human and hope it's as good a game as Mr. Dyack believes it to be.

Outsourcing breeds competition, dosen't it?

The interview overall is very interesting. I have to disagree on Mr. Dyack's views on what he sees as "outsourcing." Game companies, who are looking to try something new, might not have the necessary experience or even know if it is a direction they wish to pursue. In order to gain new talents, but at a manageable cost, they need to outsource to the lowers bidder who meets their requirements. Especially the smaller developers, who don't have the resources to go out and buy a shiny, new art or story writing team. Also, the problem with IP's being bought by corporations is that they do not care about the IP not that they are misunderstanding the authors original intent. The IPs are being used to sell units, not to make an awesome game with a well established title that the developers enjoy which is a no win situation to the gamers who love the IP and are being served with an inferior product.

Title goes here.

Awesome interview. My only criticism is that you seem to have some spellcheck errors in there - I'm pretty sure deluded = diluted, delusion = dilution. Other than that, awesome job! I hope to see more of these sorts of discussions.

Buying it.

I was already looking forward to that game despite the old bad reviews, if only because I'm a SF fan and a sucker for everything that is related to Viking's mythology, but I'm also agreeing with a lot of things being said by Mr. Dyack and although at some points in the past I was thinking that "he should shut the hell up and let his game do the talking" I came away very impressed by his views expressed in this interview and his opinion on academics and outsourcing.
So now I'm going to buy that game because I want it AND because I want to support a company like Silicon Knights.

Early marketing

I was having a conversation with a fellow student who is majoring in Game Programming and myself in Game Design over this exact subject last week. I can't recall any media based market that has ever implemented such early releases of a project and frankly don't understand the benefits of doing so.
Denis, you've ignited a fervor in me to better understand the intricacies of outsourcing and the future direction of the gaming industry and I thank you for that. I truly hope your business model of "moral imperatives" is fruitful and that you and Silicon Knights have many years of successful fun.
Xboxlive: QU4ND4RY
Email: Duswesto@UAT.edu

is...

i agree

This is why i come to this site and nowhere else :)
i know for a fact im going to buy too human now..... i stopped buying EA games and now i will buy SK games.
I think its best to support ppl u feel are helping the industry we all love :)
Thats y i have 2 subscriptions to GFW :)

Great interview

Well done, this was a great 2-part read. Dennis is an interesting guy with lots of interesting things to say. I'm particularly interested in his engagement theory and I'd like to know which games he considers to have achieved that. Anyways, good stuff!